SOURCE: "Mr. Justice Holmes," in A Mencken Chrestomathy, edited by H. L. Mencken, Alfred A. Knopf, 1942, pp. 258-65.

In the following review of The Dissenting Opinions of Mr. Justice Holmes, originally published in the American Mercury in May 1930, Mencken pronounces Holmes's decisions "interesting as literature" because of his "easy-going cynicism, " but argues against the widely-held notion that Holmes was a political liberal defending freedom.

Mr. Justice Holmes's dissenting opinions [presented in The Dissenting Opinions of Mr. Justice Holmes] have got so much fawning praise from Liberals that it is somewhat surprising to discover that Mr. Lief is able to muster but fifty-five of them, and even more surprising to hear from Dr. Kirchwey that in only one case did the learned justice stand quite alone, and that the cases "in which he has given expression to the judgment of the court, or in which he has concurred in...